Actress Irene Tsu,
an LACC Alum, Talks to LACC Cinema Students
About
her Film Career

The Chinese-Born Actress--a Frequent TV Guest Star, Appeared with John
Wayne in “The Green Berets”

Actress Irene Tsu, who was a student in
the Cinema program at LA City College in the early 70s, was a guest
speaker in Professor Tom Stempel’s
“History of Motion Pictures” class earlier this week. The class saw a
screening of “Comrades, Almost a Love Story,” a 1996 film from Hong
Kong that Ms. Tsu appeared in, and
afterwards she talked about her career and answered students’
questions.

Ms.
Tsu’s first speaking role was in “Take
Her, She’s Mine,” a 1963 film in which she had a scene with Jimmy
Stewart, but because she had not grown up seeing movies, she did not
know who he was, she said. She appeared in director John Ford’s last
film, “Seven Women,” and like most actors found Mr. Ford terrifying
and intimidating. She was similarly intimidated, she said, by actor
John Wayne when she appeared in the 1968 film “The Green Berets,”
which Mr. Wayne both starred in and directed.

Ms.
Tsu also worked with Elvis Presley in the
1966 film “Paradise, Hawaiian Style,” but discovered that Elvis hated
to rehearse, so the scenes you see with them in the film are the first
time they ever went through the scene.

She said that she enjoyed making “Comrades, Almost a Love Story” even
though it was a low-budget film, with no trailers or dressing rooms. As
opposed to playing an “Asian doctor” or “Asian mother,” as she does in
American films and television, she had a chance to play a real character,
in this case, the aunt of the lead male character.

She often
works in American television, most recently in the Lifetime series “The
Division.” She’s found, she said, when she takes on a role as a guest
star that she has little time to create a character, since the directors
focus mostly on the stars. However, Mr. Stempel pointed out that “Ms.
Tsu acted the stars off the screen” when a
clip of her scenes from “The Division” episode were screened.

Born in
Shanghai, China, Ms. Tsu began her screen
career as an uncredited dancer in the 1961
film version of the musical “Flower Drum Song.”

The cinema
history class students had many questions about her work and what it was
like as an Asian-American actress in American movies and television. Ms.
Tsu also said that she enjoyed working most
with directors who would communicate with her.